Guns Of Icarus Online
Main => Gameplay => Topic started by: awkm on July 09, 2013, 04:55:41 pm
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Post your comments regarding guns and gun skills balance here for v1.3
For theory crafting and specific weapon discussion, please move it to its own thread. Let's try to keep this to issues tracking.
Change log:
http://gunsoficarus.com/community/blog/version-1-3-is-here/ (http://gunsoficarus.com/community/blog/version-1-3-is-here/)
Thanks
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So currently the mine launcher seems powerful but it really isn't used much and is easily avoided even by new pilots limiting its utility and usefulness on the battlefield.
So how to make it the terrorizing force on the battlefield it was always intended to be?
Turn them into proximity mines! Allow them to be to detonated by ships even further away than currently. This gives them the area denial they've always been meant to have. Distance to detonation can be tweaked into balance.
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Agreed.
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Since mines have been out for like a whole what, two days, I suggest we wait a bit and see what uses people find for it before making changes ;)
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Since mines have been out for like a whole what, two days, I suggest we wait a bit and see what uses people find for it before making changes ;)
This...
Honestly I'm afraid that if mines get buffed then certain maps will become almost unplayable, like Canyons or Paritan Rumble. Or what about any CP map? I know you can shoot mines down, but still...
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Don't worry, I'm not going to make any changes any time soon.
Got bigger fish to fry. Ducks to sear? Cakes to ice?
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You can use them as proximity mines, kinda. You can shoot them and blow them up. One mine explosion is enough to take out another mine, and another. Takes two shots with a merc to take one out.
Or you can launch your 6th mine, which blows up the first and can chain from there.
Mines will take some creativity and coordination. The friendly fire makes me very hesitant to even try and take mines usually, and I can't find a place for it on my junker.
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Any buff to Mines will make Zen a happy camper. That said, I think they're currently just right. It's easy to avoid or destroy them, but if you do hit one, it can be almost catastrophic. Just wait, one of these days someone (hopefully me >:D) will find a strategy with mines that'll have everyone shouting "Nerf it!"
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I've been using mines fairly well for the way I play, which is usually in pugs and very heavy in terrain use and ambush setting.
Essentially I've been using the Mines the same way I use Tar, not always to do damage, but to prevent a ship from going in a direction I don't want them to go so I can get into a better position.
The problem I've had with the Mine launcher is coordinating it soon enough with my Gunners. A good pilot as a gunner would likely know where to put a mine for maximum affect, a great Gunner would likely know as well but a decent gunner isn't as quick with figuring out how to best use an ambush weapon that requires some fore thought.
Though I've had some luck with telling a gunner to just spread a field of mines and I try to work it into the dance of death as we go.
I'm still of the opinion piercing does to much damage to quickly to Armor. I like the utility we have with the different guns and various play styles that can be achieved, but I feel strongly that more diversity could be found, more use for various ammos, if the over-all effectiveness of piercing was brought down so breaking a ships Armor is more a result of overwhelming the teams Engineers with good positioning, timing and applied spread grouped weapons from multiple ships, rather than a single ship with a good dual or trifecta combination that requires piercing as part of its damage equation.
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I'm still of the opinion piercing does to much damage to quickly to Armor. I like the utility we have with the different guns and various play styles that can be achieved, but I feel strongly that more diversity could be found, more use for various ammos, if the over-all effectiveness of piercing was brought down so breaking a ships Armor is more a result of overwhelming the teams Engineers with good positioning, timing and applied spread grouped weapons from multiple ships, rather than a single ship with a good dual or trifecta combination that requires piercing as part of its damage equation.
I agree with this ^
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I'm still of the opinion piercing does to much damage to quickly to Armor. I like the utility we have with the different guns and various play styles that can be achieved, but I feel strongly that more diversity could be found, more use for various ammos, if the over-all effectiveness of piercing was brought down so breaking a ships Armor is more a result of overwhelming the teams Engineers with good positioning, timing and applied spread grouped weapons from multiple ships, rather than a single ship with a good dual or trifecta combination that requires piercing as part of its damage equation.
I agree with this ^
I second this, there are so many interesting loadouts that get ignored completely due to piercing's effectiveness.
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I agree with the above.
Shave a bit off the Piercing damage modifier vs. Armour, down to 1.2 or 1.3 (from 1.5)
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For the record, we moved towards specialization due to feedback received from beta and early in the retail release of the game. It was more normalized in the past.
Queso and some other asked to test normalized damage modifiers again on Dev App. For testers, the normalized data has been set so you can go play around in there.
EVERY damage modifier has been normalized, not just piercing. Engagement times will be MUCH longer.
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For the record, we moved towards specialization due to feedback received from beta and early in the retail release of the game. It was more normalized in the past.
Queso and some other asked to test normalized damage modifiers again on Dev App. For testers, the normalized data has been set so you can go play around in there.
EVERY damage modifier has been normalized, not just piercing. Engagement times will be MUCH longer.
Normalized as in how? I honestly do not understand, excuse me for the incovenience ^^'
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They're less specialized. So for example with piercing they'd reduce its effectiveness against armour and increase its effectiveness against hull. The idea is to have less "required" damage types as is the case currently with explosive and piercing.
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They're less specialized. So for example with piercing they'd reduce its effectiveness against armour and increase its effectiveness against hull. The idea is to have less "required" damage types as is the case currently with explosive and piercing.
Will totally test.
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But it also limits the effect of shatter on components and flechette on balloons for now in the test server, which generally speaking isn't as much of a concern to me as the overall death of a ship that is facilitated by piercing combinations.
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I personally think that every weapon right now is mostly fine other then the Gatling and the Mercury (Dun dun duuun, you never expected that!), the fact that both of these guns double as disablers is also something to look at. I think that just lowering the current piercing modifier to something like 1.3 or 1.2 would be most beneficial instead of making everything mostly the same.
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Yeah, I really need to get my stuff together for that test. Just been having the busiest week of my summer at the moment.
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Please make a normalization thread.
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I don't think Gat needs changes. Merc maybe too effective against armor, but I thing gat is fine (takes gat a while to pierce armor escpecialy if you lack heavy ammo or have problems hitting - lately our gunners have been having problems bringing junker armor down even with heavy clip, takes 3.5 - 4 clips of gatling to take junker's Armor. Haven't tried it myself since 1.3, haven't had time to junp of a spot where I could - either helping new players or on hull duty. Can someone check Heavy clip + Galing and check bullet spread and bullet offset on heavy clip in comparison to none (according to tooltip description there should be no diffirence and no spread(?) ).
With firefighting changes either extinguisher and chemspray are too useless or fire is stacking much much too fast. Mostly flamers. Flamers weren't as bad as people regarded them in 1.2, people just weren't using them correctly. Iike having your a prymidion have flak in rear port slot, javelin in port slot, get in front left and carrorade front right. You still have a good weapon combo, but you are doing it wrong. Or have gat/flak front and use flak to try and kill armor and use gat to kill hull - it's a good combo but you are doing it wrong.
Now extinguishing fire takes 6 seconds (chem spray 3sec, extinguisher 3 sec) and 2 people. Other way you extinguish fire fast, but it lasts for .1 of a sec, before you have fire back or takes 18 seconds to extinguish fire with chem spray.
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There are 2 ways to effectively deal with a flamethrower.
1) Do not be in range of the flamethrower
2) Chem spray essential components prior to being doused in flames
Don't forget an opponent sacrifices a lot of dps by choosing to harass you with a flamethrower over another weapon. Mitigating the efficacy of fire will make them regret their choice.
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My flame ship, the Roasting Duck is a flamer carousel Pyramidion. While I believe it effective, it is certainly a support ship and not a killer ship.
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I was going through the 1.1.4 release notes, and I noticed this.
Squid received small boost to armor, from 200 to 220 (Charged Rounds + Field Gun now requires 2 shots to destroy full Squid armor)
Should that be the case? Even after the patch charged merc one-shotted Squid armour, and nothing's changed to the merc's damage or the Squid's armour since then. You can look at the math:
((75*1.5)+(300*0.2))*1.3 = 224.25
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That was a Muse mistake that none of us ever bothered to call them out on. I noticed it when it happened but never said anything since I never really was bothered by the Squid having 200 armor to begin with.
I always assumed think they meant it to be 225.
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((75*1.5)+(300*0.2))*1.3 = 224.25
Fixed. Squid has 230 armor now.
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I for one would like to see more options for armor piercing light weapons. Besides the harpoon, which I feel has a very specific niche use and is not very useful for a general weapon, only the mercury and the gatling do piercing damage, though it seems we have no end to explosive anti hull damage with the banshee, artemis, mortar, and flak, all of which fill different purposes at different ranges. I'm just saying that I'd like more options for my build, as I feel that gatlings are the only viable option for anti armor.
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In the works.
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How about medium piercing weapons? We have none, I would hope the priority is bringing new medium weapons on the table instead of adding even more light weapons, which I feel are already varied enough.
At the moment preparing a loadout for the Galleon isn't nearly as fun as any other ship loadout because of limited options in the medium weapons department.
That's just my opinion on the matter of course...
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Hey Serenum,
A lot of consideration is put into the new content that is release, and I'm sure that Muse is working on a great new feature for us to play with :))... Let's keep this post focused on Balance Issues in 1.3...
Thanks!
Shink
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How about medium piercing weapons?
The horror! This would make the galleon far too powerful. Anyhow that's as far as I'll go there, it's a buried topic laying somewhere around here...
I do agree there needs to be more medium weapons, but as it stands medium weapons seem almost equally used besides the flak. I would blame that on its lack of secondary utility because we all know it's a strong finisher, but without utility and a projectile I'm sure I can outrun on land, it lacks that punch to bring it to the same level as the other heavy guns.
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Well since it has a high % chance to set something on fire too, it did get marginally more useful in that regard with all the fire cooldowns. It has it's place.
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Interesting it has a high ignite chance.. I've never noticed it. Then again I usually do not waste ammunition before a strip or suspected strip - as is typical practice of an explosive primary weapon. I'll play with that in some tests I do doubt it to be anything spectacular like the carronade with incendiary and warranting shooting before the hull is dropped.
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True, and I'm not certain on the stacks it actually invokes. All explosive damage has a % to ignite a fire on its own, based on damage.
Timing a heavy flak is kinda funny too. It's such a sluggish projectile that you have to pray you didn't screw up.
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Does anyone know what the approximate range of a mine's proximity trigger or AoE? It seems you don't have to touch one for it to go off, but still be pretty much in arms reach. As for the AoE, how many ship lengths can one mine hit? Can one mine disable two ships? How about health? How much damage can one take before exploding?
The mine really looks pretty fair as is to be honest. MAYBE.... It could have a bigger trigger radius.
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Not sure about trigger radius or health, but the AoE is 60. It's large enough to hit more than one ship.
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The mine really looks pretty fair as is to be honest. MAYBE.... It could have a bigger trigger radius.
Turn them into proximity mines! Allow them to be to detonated by ships even further away than currently. This gives them the area denial they've always been meant to have. Distance to detonation can be tweaked into balance.
I know right!
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The mine really looks pretty fair as is to be honest. MAYBE.... It could have a bigger trigger radius.
Turn them into proximity mines! Allow them to be to detonated by ships even further away than currently. This gives them the area denial they've always been meant to have. Distance to detonation can be tweaked into balance.
I know right!
The effects of the impact damage that is dealt should also lessen the further away the ship that is being hit is.
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I think the light flak needs some attention. Before there was a good mix between flaks and mortars as the killing weapon with benefits to both. I fear that with the heavy change (I refuse to call it a nerf) the flak now really loses out to the mortar. It is simply too inaccurate with anything other than heavy.
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There might finally be an argument to reducing the jitter for the light flak (or instead maybe increasing speed and range)... but then again doing it too much would make flak op due to burst rounds and such.
It seems that anytime there is even the smallest change; either the flak or the mortar will become the superior weapon and hence, meta; which almost seems inevitable due to how similar those guns are to each other in function.
No one said gun balance was easy.
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I think the light flak needs some attention. Before there was a good mix between flaks and mortars as the killing weapon with benefits to both. I fear that with the heavy change (I refuse to call it a nerf) the flak now really loses out to the mortar. It is simply too inaccurate with anything other than heavy.
Javrak may have something to say about that. He has been hitting with burst and a couple other ammo types on flak from a good distance with more than respectable accuracy.
(And Sammy, I agree, this is not a nerf. I don't see how making a gat or flak or any other gun with a spread into something laser precise can be considered a nerf.)
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It is funny watching people miss with lasers though. It's so accurate, you become less accurate, if it where.
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It's kinda funny, since the tracers of the gat don't seem to correlate with where the bullets are, it can be hard to gauge where the bullets are actually going when turning, rising, falling, etc. When the gat with heavy had a bit of spread, it made figuring out where you're shooting a bit easier.
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Burst ammo, what cannot they do with the current meta solutions? My lil' baby waby projectiles, go make daddy proud!
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Can some one explain the logic of making the mines/mine balloons take more than one hit to detonate? Trying to clear an old mine field with direct fire seems like it is more difficult than it should be. Was there a problem with people air bursting mines near enemy ships being OP?
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Can some one explain the logic of making the mines/mine balloons take more than one hit to detonate? Trying to clear an old mine field with direct fire seems like it is more difficult than it should be. Was there a problem with people air bursting mines near enemy ships being OP?
Good question.
Beside the hitbox of mines seem a bit strange, they are not easy to hit.
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I don't feel like making a new thread for this, but I finally figured out how to use mines aggressively. I side mount them on my Hwachafish. The hwacha breaks their engines and leaves target ship unable to evade, I can then close to appropriate mine range and start pumping out little bundles of grief until the hwacha reloads. The high mounted Goldfish helm give me a great view from which I can gauge the range and the ship is maneuverable enough that it isn't very hard to get into position, especially against a crippled opponent. Mines can also be used to discourage my victim's teamate from getting too close, especially if he wants to ram me off my prey.
For ammo I ask my crew to bring burst. Even if no mines go off from proximity fuse, the 6th mine will set detonate the 1st mine, and if the field is tight enough all mines will go off simultaneously. It is also great to watch one mine catch two ships in its blast radius.
The new patch has been out for weeks and I am probably not the first to figure out the new toy muse gave us, but I feel pretty proud of myself anyway.
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I've not tried burst with mines, but I sometimes use them as a mortar. It's difficult to judge the range from the helm, but effective when you get a near-miss detonation.
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Burst does not increase the proximity fuse distance, but it does make it easier for one mine to trigger another. I have spent some time experimenting with how wide a minefield I can create and still have them all go off simultaneously. With burst rounds the answer is a pretty big chunk of sky. normally it takes too long to get 5 mines in the sky so that the 6th will detonate the 1st any where near the target. However if the ship is crippled, mines make a devastating finishing move.
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I just did some math between Lochnagar rounds and other rounds for the Typhon Heavy Flak, and these are the numbers I got based on full clip damage
Fully armed charged rounds deal total of 766.6 Explosive
Fully armed heatsink rounds deal a total of 663.75 Explosive
Fully Armed Lochnagar deals 663.75 Explosive....
Granted, Lochnagar is now the closest range shot there is, but the fact that it damages your gun so badly, it's basically a one shot heatsink. If your gun is on fire, just fire it again and rebuild...
I don't know, I just find it a bit...less impressive when you realize the thing that makes your gun a glass cannon deal as much damage as a full clip of the weakest ammo....especially since the Loch was the shot for Flak at one time...I am heavily split on it now that I know the numbers...I can see both sides of the argument and frankly, agree with both sides now.
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Do javelin Light harpoon guns need something to make them more usefull?
I haven't played Guns Of Icarus Online for very long but one thing i have noticed is your see many different weapons on the ships but one you almost never see is the Javelin Light Harpoon gun. Honestly i have a feeling this is cause it is next to useless. There are so many other guns that are much better that people use. Yes it does lots of hull damage and can pull ships towards you but it does not do crazy amounts of hull damage and the pull does not do a whole lot. What i am suggesting(there are probably better ideas) is to make it so when the javelin hooks onto another ship you can then send small explosives down the rope that do damage. You would be able to get 1-5(mabey) total mines that you can send down it then the rope would break and you have to re-hook them. This would make the javelin Light harpoon guns so much more useful cause you would have a way you could get some sure hit shots. If you can hit the ship with the harpoon. If this is added i would even decrease its accuracy a bit since it would be a easy way to do a bunch of damage.
This is just a idea and I belive there are some that love the Javelin light harpoon gun but many others may agree with me, just please don't start raging at me.
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This had actually been proposed before a long time ago however the devs dismissed it since there was no obvious mechanic to build into the game order to allow harpoon removal, which they felt would be necessary.
The harpoon has needed love ever since 1.2 (when ship mass was increased) however it requires quite a bit of work and the devs have been working on higher priority projects.
That being said I think the obvious changes would be to increase piercing damage, increase towing strength and allow the tow to be controlled by letting the gunner reel in with the right mouse button.
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To balance most guns Muse just has to tweak numbers and multipliers. To balance the harpoon though, Muse would have to tweak physics.
I can understand the hold ups as that is daunting.
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explosive guns destroy ships parts too easy(engines, weapons..) especially the manticore. As gunner its annoying if the enemy has a manticore, you are always at repairs every time manticores fires the 16 explosives
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It might be annoying but it is balanced.
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explosive guns destroy ships parts too easy(engines, weapons..) especially the manticore. As gunner its annoying if the enemy has a manticore, you are always at repairs every time manticores fires the 16 explosives
The explosive damage isn't killing your components, rather the shatter damage is, just so you know. The hwacha is balanced though. It's much less effective at longer ranges, and while it can totally disable a boat, it has weak killing power on its own.
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That being said I think the obvious changes would be to increase piercing damage, increase towing strength and allow the tow to be controlled by letting the gunner reel in with the right mouse button.
The only problem is using the mouse wheel changes your weapons ammo loadout.
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U could take that feature out.
At least for me. :D
Im always using shortcuts for that.
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That being said I think the obvious changes would be to increase piercing damage, increase towing strength and allow the tow to be controlled by letting the gunner reel in with the right mouse button.
The only problem is using the mouse wheel changes your weapons ammo loadout.
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I'm really not a fan of the mercury field gun nerf. I feel like you went about it all wrong. The ONLY problem I really had with the gun was when people ran two of them, now there's no point in running even one. You should just make it a one gun per ship sort of deal.
The BIGGEST problem with the field gun nerf however, is the speed. You took a sniper rifle basically and made it have the speed of a pistol. Think about a sniper rifle in real life, the bullets move FASTER than other guns. It's like taking a barret and making it travel at the speed of a 9mm. Doesn't make much sense does it?
If you gave it back the normal speed, but kept the drop and reduced range of movement, it'd be fine.
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I'm really not a fan of the mercury field gun nerf. I feel like you went about it all wrong. The ONLY problem I really had with the gun was when people ran two of them, now there's no point in running even one. You should just make it a one gun per ship sort of deal.
The BIGGEST problem with the field gun nerf however, is the speed. You took a sniper rifle basically and made it have the speed of a pistol. Think about a sniper rifle in real life, the bullets move FASTER than other guns. It's like taking a barret and making it travel at the speed of a 9mm. Doesn't make much sense does it?
If you gave it back the normal speed, but kept the drop and reduced range of movement, it'd be fine.
It's not really a sniper rifle though, It's a field gun. Basically a mini-cannon. It's even called a small howitzer in the combat log. I think it fires more appropriately now than it did before.
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Think about a sniper rifle in real life, the bullets move FASTER than other guns.
Sniper rifle, a man-portable anti-personnel weapon. Mercury, definitely not man-portable anti-armour weapon.
I don't see where your relating it back to "reality" works. You can't think of the Mercury as a sniper rifle, the analogy just don't fly.
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Our game is ever so loosely based on reality.
And just to make a point. An average 9mm bullet travels at about 300 meters/second. A gun in our game that travels at around that speed is the Heavy Flak at 240m/s. Another is the Gatling at 300m/s. Most of are guns travel quite a bit faster. .50 caliber sniper rifles are at about 800m/s. The Field Gun was at 1200m/s and is now at 750m/s. However, at the end of the day none of that crap matters because you're flying around in a virtual environment. Reality is simulated and the way we perceive simulation is very different from how we perceive reality.
To put it simply, we are not a simulation. The changes to the Field Gun can be compared to making it like it has the speed of a 9mm compared to before, fine, but I don't care. It's about how it feels and how it affects gameplay. I have that freedom to shape gameplay in certain ways because we are only loosely based on reality. It's a good freedom to have because simulations are heavily constrained and imbalances are hard to fix.
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750 m/s is closer to "realism" than 1200 m/s, and lowering the speed has been a good change in my opinion. I admit, I do not know that much about the inner workings on the game, but now the Merc is better in terms of speed.
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I'm here to inform that the Double Barreled Mortar is OP. Once hull armor is down, it does enough damage to take down any ship. With greased rounds it even does it fast enough to prevent the crew from repairing the armor. I'm not even kidding here, Goldfishes and Galleons drop like flies when their hull armor is stripped. I recommend either lowering the damage on the mortar or halving the amount of rounds per clip.
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I'm here to inform that the Double Barreled Mortar is OP. Once hull armor is down, it does enough damage to take down any ship. With greased rounds it even does it fast enough to prevent the crew from repairing the armor. I'm not even kidding here, Goldfishes and Galleons drop like flies when their hull armor is stripped. I recommend either lowering the damage on the mortar or halving the amount of rounds per clip.
With the exclusion of the latest Lesmok changes, that is perfectly fine, Geased rounds are a very close range ammo type, they aren't even as effective as people think since they make your projectiles slower, which means damage is delivered slower, keep your distance and any Mortar gunner using just Greased won't be able to shoot at you, other than that, keep your armor up and use cover and clouds. The mortar was always capable of that, it's not something new, but it's a hard weapon to use properly.
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Sorry, but I don't think it's fair for players, especially for Galleon captains, to see their 1100+ hp ship to evaporate after their hull is down. The hull takes a lot of time to repair on some ships and the HP is supposed to compensate for it. This is doubly so on Galleons where vanilla acceleration and turning is virtually non existent. It gives the higher armor ships a large advantage over the lower armor ships because Chaingun takes a lot more time to strip the same amount of armor.
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Incendiary dual mortars are super fun to use <3 only tried it recently, but it works well.
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I'm here to inform that the Double Barreled Mortar is OP. Once hull armor is down, it does enough damage to take down any ship. With greased rounds it even does it fast enough to prevent the crew from repairing the armor. I'm not even kidding here, Goldfishes and Galleons drop like flies when their hull armor is stripped. I recommend either lowering the damage on the mortar or halving the amount of rounds per clip.
If you're flying close enough for a mortar to use greased ammo when your hull is down, then yeah, your ship should blow up... something isn't OP just because you're playing into its effectiveness. All you have to do is stay farther away and it becomes much harder to hit with (still pretty easy with lesmok, but then it's doing less DPS so it's not as a big of a concern).
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Locking this thread. Please use the 1.3.1 balance discussion topic.
https://gunsoficarus.com/community/forum/index.php?topic=2007.0